


There Were No Stairs

by ottermo



Category: Cabin Pressure
Genre: As near to fluff as I get, Family, Gen, Parent-child relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-01
Updated: 2012-11-01
Packaged: 2017-11-17 12:54:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/551789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gordon's never been able to see much to be proud of in his son. One day he'll be sorry for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Were No Stairs

**Author's Note:**

> I've started so many Cabin Pressure one-shots I've lost count, but this is the first one I've finished. It's not as angst-filled as I thought it was going to be, but probably doesn't quite reach fluff either. Ah well! Enjoy :)

Gordon's ridiculous friends were over. Even the echoes of their raucous laughter from the next room were enough to make Carolyn shudder. In her opinion, Gordon's friends were exactly the kind of man Gordon would be if he didn't have her to keep him tethered - loud, ill-mannered, uncaring and basically downright irritating. Still, these visits came seldom enough that she could put up with it, and they usually left her husband in a very good mood for a few days afterwards. This was a phenomenon which was certainly beyond Carolyn's reach these days, and came therefore as a welcome break.

She was idly flicking through a magazine in the smaller sitting room, waiting for the evening to be over. Arthur had been in his bedroom, tackling some homework, last time she'd checked. If he wasn't still doing that, she could only hope he'd stumbled upon some hitherto-unsuspected common sense and stayed away from the group of men. Gordon was very different when he was surrounded by those apes, and if he said anything to upset Carolyn's little boy there would be hell to pay.

As if the unspoken threat had beckoned him, Arthur was suddenly in the room, his usual cheeriness only slightly muted by the traces of a frown across his round face.

"Are you all right, sweetheart?" she prompted, sure nothing was seriously wrong, but recognising the puzzled expression that usually meant a Question was about to be raised.

He came to sit on the sofa next to her. "Mum," he began, "when I fell down the stairs-"

"What?" Carolyn interrupted, immediately worried. "You fell down the stairs? Did you hurt yourself?" Her eyes flickered over her son quickly, searching out any signs of damage. The stairs were winding and steep in their house, and a tumble down them would have been dangerous for anybody, let alone her accident-prone offspring.

But Arthur merely blinked at her. "What?"

Carolyn frowned. "When did you fall down the stairs? Today?"

Realisation dawned on the small face. "Oh! No, I don't mean today. I mean ages ago, when I was little. I must have been little because I don't remember at all."

Carolyn shook her head. "I'm afraid you've lost me, then. As far as I know you've never fallen down the stairs. You've done a lot of things, but never that. We had a stairgate, and I didn't let you out of my sight when you were anywhere near it."

Arthur looked still more confused. A horrible, twisting feeling started in the pit of Carolyn's stomach. She hoped that his answer to her next question would prove what she was dreading to be false. "Arthur, who told you about falling down the stairs, if you don't remember doing it?"

"Dad."

Anger now, bubbling away quietly but unmistakably. "I see. What did he say?"

Arthur looked uncomfortable. "I shouldn't have been listening. It's bad to listen at the door if you're not in the conversation. I'm sorry."

He shrank back a little, but Carolyn moved over so she was next to him, and put an arm around the boy's shoulders. "Just this once, it's all right, as long as you tell me what you heard."

Arthur nodded. "Okay. I'd just been in to talk to Dad, and then when I went out of the room I didn't quite shut the door, I mean I didn't leave it properly open but it wasn't properly shut either, there was probably two centimeters of gap. Or maybe three, but I don't think it could have been four because..."

Seeing that this was about to develop into that special kind of verbal tangent Arthur had a gift for, Carolyn stepped in. "All right, it was a little bit open, yes. Carry on."

"...yes. And then one of Dad's friends said that I seemed a little bit slow, and Dad said that I was but it was because I fell down some steps and that's why I'm like what I'm like."

Carolyn could only look at him for a moment, then pulled Arthur close to her and kissed the top of his head, waiting for a couple of seconds afterwards while she tried to work out how to handle this. How to reassure her little boy that none of it was true without letting him know that his father was a poisonous, lying slime of a man. 

"So I just wanted to know," Arthur continued, oblivious to his mother's inner turmoil, "if it was a lot of steps, like maybe all of the ones that go up to my bedroom, or just a couple like the ones that come to the front door. Or an in-between number, like the slide at the park. Or-"

"Arthur, stop." She shifted so that they were next to each other again, so she could see his face. "There were no stairs. You didn't fall down anything, all right?"

He looked at her blankly. "But Dad said-"

"I know what he said. Okay, Arthur, sweetheart, I don't know exactly why your Dad said those things, but I can try to explain why he might have thought it was a good idea. Are you going to listen carefully?"

"Yep. Really _really_ carefully."

"Good. Right. You remember before you started going to school, we had that little chat about you and the other children?"

"Yeah."

"And do you remember that I explained to you, that most of the other children weren't the same as you, in some ways?"

"Yeah. Because of my learning thing. Because they can get used to doing new things a bit quicker than me."

"That's right, good boy."

"But you said it didn't matter because I'm good at other things and not everyone has to be good at school things."

"Yes. Exactly. For instance, you're very good at understanding things like that, once they've been explained to you, and you don't forget them. But some people don't understand that sort of thing, you see. Maybe they never had things explained to them, or maybe they're just not very good at remembering. Some people - not everybody, but some people - don't understand about people who can't learn very fast. They think that something must have happened to people like that, that they fell off something, or got hit, or hurt by a car. They don't understand that not everybody's brain works in the same way, and that just because someone finds learning a bit difficult, it doesn't mean something is wrong with them, it just means they are good at other things. Do you understand?"

Arthur's little forehead was creased in concentration, and although he nodded, he still looked puzzled. "I understand what you said. That maybe Dad's friends don't understand about my brain being different. But Dad knows, doesn't he? Dad understands about me, so why would he say that I fell down the stairs, when I didn't?"

Carolyn bit her lip before carrying on. "Again, until I've asked him, I can't say for sure why he said it. I think, though, that Dad probably just didn't want to have to explain what I've just told you to all his friends, and he thought it would be easier just to say that you had had an accident."

"Okay." Arthur leaned against her, snaking one little arm round her waist. "But you explained it really good-"

"Really well," she corrected, gently.

"...really well, yes. And it didn't take very long, so Dad could have just done that and then he wouldn't have had to lie. Because lying's not a nice thing to do."

"No, it's not." She stroked Arthur's hair softly. "But even if he had tried to explain, I bet none of Dad's friends are as good at listening as you. When you properly concentrate like you did just then, you're a really good listener. They still might not have understood, and they might have been too big for their boots to ask for help understanding, like you did because you're sensible."

"They all took their boots off at the door," Arthur mused, "I put them all in a nice row so they'll be easy to find when they go home. Maybe they had to take them off because they were too small for them and they were hurting their feet." 

"I didn't mean it quite as literally as that, dear heart, but you're right. And that was very kind of you to put all their boots neatly, well done."

Arthur beamed up at her. "Thanks, Mum! It was actually quite hard because they're all really big men, aren't they, and all of their boots are quite similar sizes. So I looked at all the buckles and I matched up the ones that were the same. And then I looked at the patterns on the underneath bit and matched up the ones that were the same. And then to check I had it right I looked at the shininess, because some of them are newer and they're more shiny, so a quite shiny right boot had to go with a quite shiny left boot, because it would look really funny if you had one shiny boot and one not shiny boot, wouldn't it!"

"It would indeed," Carolyn confirmed, smiling at his enthusiasm, still fighting to suppress the fury at what Gordon had done. What, was he ashamed of his son? Did he have to blame the boy's nature on a chance accident, so nobody could think it was Gordon's own genes which might have contributed to the creation of someone like Arthur? Actually, it sounded almost plausible that they hadn't. Arthur was the most sweet-natured, well-meaning soul Carolyn had ever come across, even if his absentmindedness and literal way of thinking could get tiring at times. She almost failed to believe that any of what made Arthur Arthur had come from that hateful, unworthy swine in the next room. Carolyn herself was no angel, of course, so perhaps Arthur's inherent Arthurness came from nowhere but himself. _Even if that's true,_ she thought, _he's still more mine than yours, Gordon Shappey, more mine than he'll ever be yours. I thought you knew him too, but you've proved today that knowing him and being proud of him isn't as important as your reputation in front of your friends. Well, one day that will be your loss, if you ever stop being stupid long enough to realise it._

"Are you okay, mum?" 

Carolyn snapped out of her reverie, realising her face must have looked quite serious. She quickly rectified it with a smile. "I'm fine, thank you dear. Just thinking that I'm very lucky to have you."

He snuggled into her shoulder. "And I'm lucky as well. You're - you're brilliant."

"So are you." she murmured back. Carolyn closed her eyes for a moment. Later, she would have it out with Gordon, make him sorry he ever told that horrible lie, and worse, let their son hear him do it. But for now, she would enjoy Arthur's company, happy in the knowledge that his little world was back to normal, at least for the moment.


End file.
